PSYCHOLOGY IN LEAGUE OF LEGENDS: FLAME AND TILT

Everyone knows that there are many times when people call others names and some start performing worse because of those insults. This article is about what flaming and tilting in League of Legends are and how to manage them.

FLAMING IN LEAGUE OF LEGENDS

Flaming is the act of abusing somebody verbally. If you want your lol account to be boosted then it’s better to stop any flaming during your games! Most people do this to ruin the others gaming experience by making them feel bad. There are many times when people try to stand their ground and start flaming the other person as well.

This act is very unsportsmanlike and should never be done. It was scientifically proven that by swearing your body relieves stress, but you don’t have to swear in game. You can either swear in your mind or you can do something else to chill. There are a lot of people who calm down by using their anger at something else like physical exercises, thus improving their physical and mental health.

WHAT IS PUNISH FOR FLAME IN LEAGUE OF LEGENDS?

Flaming is reportable and it IS punishable. These punishments go from chat restrictions to permanent bans in special cases. Chat restrictions seem to have no limit to how many they can be. Someone recently received a chat restriction of 7200 games. You can be permanently banned if you do stuff like wish cancer upon another player or write racial slurs, make xenophobic or homophobic remarks. Two popular players were banned because of these reasons, Nukeduck and Mithy. The mid laner of Roccat and the support of Origen. These players were closely watched by Riot and after they have been reformed they were allowed to play competitively again.

HOW TO HANDLE TOXIC PLAYERS IN LEAGUE OF LEGENDS?

If you are on the receiving end of flame you shouldn’t feel bad, even if the play you are being flamed for was your mistake. Everyone has bad games. Everyone. Do not be discouraged by a bad play and the flame of your team mates.

By clicking ignore or typing “/mute (player name)” in chat you can get rid of that toxic player’s talking. This feature doesn’t mute pings, so if that person chills out and starts playing with the team you can see that when they ping things that are important for the team.

There are many times when people try to blame someone even if that person didn’t do anything wrong. These players usually called toxic and are very likely to flame a lot and they should be ignored either by not reading what they type or by muting them in game.

WHY DO PEOPLE FLAME?

Getting angry when something doesn’t work out is human nature. Do not be discouraged by words which mean nothing in the real world. “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.”. If you listen to this proverb and stay cool even when everyone is flaming you, you will be alright.

WHY YOU SHOULDN’T FLAME IN LEAGUE OF LEGENDS?

In other words, if you feel like flaming someone just calm yourself down. Chances are, if you are raging, then that means that either you or your team mates are underperforming. You can’t do much about your team mates skill other than just not flaming and perhaps just give them some friendly advice.

It doesn’t benefit your teammates because flame will decrease the overall morale of your team. Them knowing that they are playing badly will only create a sense of guilt within them, that they are letting the team down. Yes, it is true that they are letting the team down, but make sure their mentality doesn’t become really bashful. This will create a lack of motivation to play the game, and create poor performance. The adverse effect and the more likely one is that you’ll piss everyone off. When you’re in a state of rage, you become more impulsive, often finding yourself being put into bad situations that are entirely preventable due to a lack of assessment of the situation. If your teammates are all irritated like you are, then their performance will be poor. Also, don’t forget that by typing responses to all your flame, they will be wasting time when they can be doing something more productive. If they do nothing, then they are losing the game. This is incredibly obvious, but doing something gives you more of a chance of winning than doing absolutely nothing. Doing nothing is a guaranteed step towards a loss. You want to maximize your chances of winning.

Of course, flame doesn’t benefit yourself either. All the above points apply to yourself as well. You want to maximize your performance as well the performance of your teammates. By staying in a positive mindset, then you can achieve this. If you find yourself screaming at your teammates and your in a state of rage and making poor decisions, then just take a break. You’re doing more harm to your game if you play. If you are in a bad mood, then just wait until you aren’t. Some people say take a break from League entirely, and there is merit in that, but if you find League fun, then play some normal matches or ARAM. Play some champions that you love or play some fun builds or strategies. Just do something that will make you happy.

Ultimately, you rage because you love the game. You want to get good at the game and be the best. You want to be the best at this game because you think it’s fun. The fact that you have a chat restriction shows that you are close to losing the ability to play this game. You can’t be the best when your access to the game is completely gone. You lose the ability to play what you love, and you lose all your progress that you have made, all those hours spent getting better..

And it is completely your say in whether you can play the game or not. No one is taking away your privileges. You are taking away your own.

So if you love the game, want to be the best at this game and cherish all the progress you have made, then make sure you don’t lose the ability to. If you feel that your teammates are playing poorly, then don’t rage at them. Know that being mad at them will make them play even worse. That’s the exact opposite of what you want. You want to win. Never lose sight of what you are aiming to do. You want to maximize your chances of victory. Keep in mind that by flaming, you are completely killing all chances that you have of winning.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter who it is on your team that is making your team lose. You still lose. Flaming isn’t going to make your team win.

One last time, I’ll emphasize on this. By flaming, you are completely destroying your chances of winning.

You flame because you want to win, so where’s the logic in flaming if it’ll achieve the exact opposite of what you want.

Flame often brings in more than bad feelings or reports, it often brings in tilt.

TILT IN LEAGUE OF LEGENDS

If you’ve ever played a decent amount of ranked solo queue games, you may have experienced win streaks as well as loss streaks. Typically when you’re on a good win streak you’re feeling more confident and think rather clearly about your play since you are playing at a higher than average level compared to that of your league.

However, when a player goes on a loss streak and a particularly long one, there is a term called ’tilt’ that most associate with it. In the previous chapter of this article I talked about using the mute button as a way to prevent tilt and how it could improve your play in solo queue, but what happens if you are already on tilt and can’t get out of it?

Tilt is a poker term for a state of mental or emotional confusion or frustration in which a player adopts a less than optimal strategy, usually resulting in the player becoming over-aggressive. Even though the term tilt is a poker term by origin, the applications of it to any competitive scene is limitless.

As a player of any level, going on tilt is actually almost inevitable. If you reach your peak level of performance and play with those who are at a higher skill level than what you are placed in, the league system is designed to balance your wins and losses to about 50% if you are where you belong. That being said, going on tilt inhibits your ability to perform and will in turn lead to more losses.

The remedy to tilt is pretty much the same as the one for feeling angry. Take a break, play something else or do something that makes you happy.

After taking a break its good to get in a few warm-up matches in normal games to get mechanically prepared but also to mentally prepare yourself. Bringing a clean and open mind back to the game is the most efficient way to get off tilt. Without the constant criticism and anxiety over whether a player will perform well or not, the mind allows itself to do more and think less which can offer really good results.

Going on tilt is something that can affect even the best of players. Anyone can see it almost on a daily basis. Someone performs badly, they rage and end up going on losing streaks. It is a necessary evil in League of Legends that things like this happen but in order to help manage it better, the first step lies with the players themselves.

UNDERSTADING LEAGUE OF LEGENDS TILT

Here are some signs that you might be on tilt:

Playing a champion you just lost to: you are playing champions that seem strong because you lost to them even if you do not play them usually.

Focusing on the last game: you have some sort of PTSD because of the last game and you think that it will happen again if people don’t ban what your enemies did well on last game.

Constantly blaming team mates.

Expecting to lose because of a small factor: it’s minute 1:12 and you give up a first blood to the enemy support. It’s not a big deal, but you think that because of your death the game is over and the opponents will win it for sure. If you expect to lose it’s better to dodge a game than play it. Losing 3 points is way better than losing 15+ and at least 20 minutes.

Making the same mistakes over and over again: ”Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results (Albert Einstein)”. If you try to do something multiple times and it fails every time then you should probably stop doing that and try something else that might work. For example if you are a jungler and you try to invade the other jungler at level 2 and the whole enemy team shows up each time, then you should probably stick to farming until you see a good opportunity to invade or gank.

Focusing on feeders, afkers or trolls: you’re not the only one who is matched up with trolls, even if you might not believe it, it is in fact true. Sadly, the only thing you can do is ignore them, try to learn as much as possible from that game and report them at the end. As long as you’re not the troll or afk, they’ll statistically be on the other team more than on yours.

Being very aggressive to secure kills: as the definition of tilt states, it makes the person much more aggressive and aggressive people often do stuff that isn’t well thought out. League of Legends is an objective based game. Focus on farming, taking objectives and being there for your team more than killing your lane opponent over and over. This doesn’t mean that you should let the enemy pass freely when they make a mistake.

Acting better than your division: don’t take your highest division for granted, it’s entirely possible that you may have lucked there in the first place, either with good teammates or bad enemies. Take every game just as serious as the others. Acting better than your division is only demoralizing for both you and your team mates.

Finally, flaming and tilting are two acts that come after one another. If you ever find yourself doing any of them I recommend you take a break for your mental health and your league position.

COMENTS:

9 COMMENTS

Well there are many people who just can’t control their emotions and they need hard work to change it (but it needs strong will), otherwise it’s just beyond their strength and they explode again and again. I have noticed only one person among my person who was used to flame and now he stoped to that.
But it’s true that flame sucks completely and ruining games :(

I think that flaming problem is not about logic or arguments. You can easily explain to person why flaming is bad but that doesn’t mean that he will stop doing that.
It’s more about human nature and will power. Person who can’t control himself thus constantly flaming on his mates need to put really hard efforts before he will be able to stay calm when game is going against his wishes.
Also i think that riot system with warnings, ranked restrictions and bans working very well and i see significantly less flame than it was before.

Well, i’m pretty calm person and i don’t have probs with myself, but i really dislike ragers who usually losing games because they are starting to tilt since the very beginning and like black hole involve everyone in team to flame war :/

Flamers are the scourge of all mobas. They not only set the wrong way of thinking to the whole team, but they themselves make such a stupid mistake, fall into such obvious pitfalls that I did not even suspect that you can be so inattentive. Is it really so difficult to keep yourself down for 20-40 minutes while the match is going on? After the game, you can go beat the punching bag or just go outside and scream, but please keep yourself together.